unwiredben

After a few days of rest, I think it's time to clear out my PDA and figure out just what I saw this year, with the stuff I loved in bold.

16 Feature Films: Thank You For Smoking, Small Town Gay Bar, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Darkon, Danny Roane: First Time Director, The Cassidy Kids, Autumn's Eyes, Maxed Out, LOL, A Scanner Darkly, Awesome: I F*&#in' Shot That, Jumping Off Bridges, Nobelity, Who the $#%& is Jackson Pollock?, Digna: Hasta El Ultimo Aliento, Live Free of Die

38 Short Films: Scotch and Soda, Gray Days, Reel Shorts 1 (7 shorts), Reel Shorts 2 (8 shorts), Music Videos (21 shorts)

14 Panels: Looking for XML in All the Wrong Places, We Got Naked - Now What?, Shooting Docs, How to Create Passionate Users, Design and Social Responsibility, Increasing Women's Visibility on the Web, Conversation with Henry Rollins, Keynote with Heather Armstrong / Jason Kottke, Bloggers in Love, Blogging While Black, Case Study - The Cassidy Kids, Behind the Scenes - Developing OS X and Longhorn, 10 Years of "Ain't It Cool", SXSW Film Awards

2 Parties: The Cassidy Kids Party at Karma Lounge, SXSW Film Closing Party at the Produce Warehouse

5 Bands: Sleater-Kinner (SXSW Film Closing Party), Willie Mason (Antone's), Beth Orton (Antone's), Flight of the Conchords (Red-Eyed Fly), The Subways (Stubb's)

Compared to last year, I saw about six more films worth of material, but only about a third as much music. However, the percentage of items in bold is much higher, especially among the films. The quality of this year's programming in film and interactive was much higher, and it was easier for me to see almost everything I wanted. I also got to spend a lot of time with some good friends, do a lot of mobile blogging, and take a mental break from work, if not much of a physical rest.

I got to see my favorite musical comedy act, Flight of the Conchords, last night for a too-short 45-minute set at the packed Red Eyed Fly. I got there in a sprint from the Alamo Drafthouse and found a line of badges waiting to get into the club, but it moved pretty quickly and I found a spot to stand up near the stage.

Alas, my Treo's sound recording capabilities were no match for the loudspeakers, so I've got no "personal record" of the evening outside of a couple of photos. The group hasn't released a US album yet, so there was no merchandise. However, they were really funny, doing some improvising with the crowd. Britt even did a slightly pathetic stage dive at one point, then complained about the SXSWers who moved out of the way instead of catching him.

The set included "Bowie", a song with a long preface about time travelling using LSD and how Jermaine was trapped in a bathroom with the early-70's Tina Turner and the modern Tina Turner, and the young Tina was asking if she should leave Ike, and Jermain wanted to say "What's love got to do, got to do with it", but realized the young Tina wouldn't get the reference. There was "Humans Are Dead", which imagines a world in the distant future of the year 2000 where only robots exist and the word "yes" has been replaced by "affirmative". And of course, there was "Jenny", "Boom Boom", and "Business Time", and a new song for me, "Mother*ucker", where the F was always silent. Self-censoring is funny!

The audience had a lot of fans mixed with the industry types. I saw one girl wearing a "Team-Building Exercise 1999" t-shirt (a reference to one of the lines in "Business Time"), and at one point, the guys up on stage started commenting on the fans they could hear standing behind the wall at the club, listening through the cracks because they couldn't get in.

I've not been updating as much for the last few days. It's not that I've run out of things to say -- Wednesday night's Beth Orton set at Antone's was something I'd been wanting to see for a long time, and it was a pleasure to be in a packed room just ten feet from the stage. "Jumping Off Bridges" made me cry, and while the film did move slowly, I found the story haunting. "Maxed Out" made me glad I've always been a good manager of my money and angry that our economic system has gotten itself so screwed up, finding it's own local optimum by taking advantage of people who just barely get by, "Nobelity" introduced me to a cadre of creative and important thinkers, while "Who the $%^& is Jackson Pollack?" made me laugh and taught me about the insularity of the art world. I really enjoyed the music video program earlier today -- you've got to check out this one and this one. However, after eight days of this, I'm tired. I'm typing this from the last row of the Alamo Drafthouse while a Spanish language doc spools out to a sparse crowd. I've not been paying attention; it's air conditioning and wifi and water. I've got a few more filme, a comedy/music performance (Flight of the Conchords tonight!), and maybe a veggie BBQ to go, and SXSW 2006 will be over for me.

The Beastie Boys are in the house. Their new concert film is the best music film I've seen since The Talking Head's film "Stop Making Sense". The Boys gave 50 fans Hi8 cameras during their Madison Square Garden show in New York, and then edited that footage into a masterpiece. Each song has it's own theme, with the team seeming to find a use for every filter in Final Cut Pro. The Beastie Boys also had a funny Q&A where the audience repeatedly praised then and offered them weed.

The TBA film on this year's schedule was a almost final version of Linklater's "A Scanner Darkly". The visuals of the film were all locked, but in Matt Dentler's introduction, he said they were still working on the final sound mix, and the end credits were also incomplete.

I love this film. The animation, shown in HD at the Paramount, popped off the screen and kept surprising me with its inventiveness. Robert Downy and Woody Harrelson shine in secondary roles, and Keanu works as the main character. I was also glad to see local access TV host Alex Jones shocked by a cattle prod :) It is a Linklater film, so it does get a bit talky but it was always interesting. I also really liked the score work by Austin's Graham Reynolds (aka The Golden Arm Trio), and I noticed that Foleyvision maestro Buzz Moran did a lot of the sound design for the film.

I'll certainly be up for a repeat viewing when it is released this summer.

SXSW's Film Fest had it's closing night party this evening out at a former produce warehouse on east 6th. The night are was crisp and while there were lots of people, it didn't feel too crowded. The highlight of the party for me was a long performance by Portland, Oregon rockers Sleater-Kinney, one of my favorite rock bands. They went on stage about 10:30 and played for almost two hours, playing mostly tracks from their two most recent albums "The Woods" and "One Beat". The stage area was small and intimate with room for about ten rows of fans, but there was a video camera broadcasting close-ups of the band onto a screen in the other half of the party area. The sound was VERY loud; while out on the deck, it was a bit too bass heavy, but up close to the band it sounded great. I got to get up close for their performance of "Step Aside", standing just behind the BlogHer panelist Liz Henry. I also spotted indie film guru John Pierson and his wife Janet in the crowd enjoying the show. Other highlights include "Get Up", "One Beat", "Jumpers", "Entertain", and "The One", and the encore set ended with Corrine belting out a great cover of Glen Danzig's "Mother" which blended into a raucous "Dig Me Out".

I'm hoping someone posts a good audience recording of the set. It was a far more intimate show that the Variety Playhouse set I saw last June, and much more fun than last year's chilly SXSW showcase. Hopefully, I'll get to see a few more outstanding musical acts before SXSW is over on Sunday.

"Maxed Out" was my second documentary of the day and it was a real delight. It started as a project to document how our consumer culture drives people to spend beyond their means, but it turned into an expose of the shady business practices, intense lobbying, and ethical lapses of the American banking system and they ways they take advantage of people with poor money management skills or bad luck. Looking at how credit cards are marketed and issued, it profiles a lot of different segments of the consumer credit business, and puts forward the thesis that our behavior hasn't really changed, but the the banking industry has pushed to give more and more credit to people who can't handle it and are at major risk of defaulting. Once someone gets behind, it gets harder and harder to catch up, and the recent changes in banking laws means that the methods we've traditionally provided to give people a second chance through bankruptcy now are much less available. The filmmakers did a great job with a complex topic, including some great interview footage with two guys who run a collection agency and family members who've had relative that got so depressed from their credit card debt that they committed suicide.

In the Q&A after the film, I asked them what policy changes would help. The director provided two thoughts: reform bankruptcy to again make it a viable choice for people who've gone underwater in debt, and change the credit scoring system to actually base ones credit score on your capability to pay back debts, which would keep people from overextending themselves into risky situations.

My first film of the day was the documentary "Autumn's Eyes", a powerful look at poverty in Jersey City. It followed a very cute and bright four-year old girl, Autumn, whose mother is in jail pending a hearing on assault and theft charges. Autumn's guardian is Mama Rose, the diabetic matriarch of a large extended family. The documentary follows the family through jail visits, court hearings, and the trials of family life when you don't have very much. While there are some funny moments, the film works best when it's showing how many troubles this group faces. The Q&A after the film was enlightening, especially for how the filmmakers described their working relationship with the family, with whom they've become very close. They often had to balance when they should keep the cameras rolling to document the drama in the family's life and when they should provide assistance themselves. It really made me feel fortunate for my own position in society and it broke my heart seeing how disadvantaged some people are.

My day at SXSW was shorter than usual. I got to one panel, then hit the Alamo South Lamar to catch the two Reel Shorts programs before heading to 20x2. Unfortunately, something I had to eat didn't agree with me, and while I left the parking lot heading to 20x2, by the time I got up Lamar to Riverside, I'd decided to head on to home instead.

The short films are always a mixed bag, but there were several that stood out. In the first series, I really liked "Follow Me", the story of a stalker of a stalker and "K-7", a job interview that becomes a lot more serious. "Viva, Morrisey" was also interesting, showing a LA Latino subculture devoted to the singer with their own Spanish-language "Smiths" cover band. In the second run, the outstanding entry was "Nevel is the Devil", a long skit about a really, really bad boss with some surreal moments. I also liked "24Hrs in LA", which had a British reporter telling his story about meeting LA gang members using photographs and a glass window.

I think I'll be OK the next time I wake up. For me, Tuesday is all about the last day of interactive panels and the closing night film party featuring Sleater-Kinney.

I went looking on News 8's website to find the footage they shot of the "Darkon" players, and while I didn't find any of that on the site, I found these reports of interest:

Sunday premieres, including "The Cassidy Kids"
Story on Interactive fest (I appear in the shot of people using laptops in the hallway at timecode 0:07 during the main report)

All of their SXSW coverage is collected at http://www.news8austin.com/content/sxsw/stories/.

My friends Bryan and Jake had their world premiere of their new film "The Cassidy Kids" last night, with a virtual sell-out of the Paramount Theater. I was there in the third row with my friends Patrick and Tiffany and two of the film's writers, Tasca Shadix and Tom Willett; behind me were Charlie Sotelo and Cassie (from "The Show With No Name") and Dan Brown ("Rollergirls" TV show).

The film seemed to be received well. This was my third viewing of it, but I was really happy with the the edits since the previous versions. The timeline was clearer, and I liked the new footage of Kadeem Harrison's character, Dennis, which I'd not seen in the previous versions. I think it's an effective film, one that tries to juggle lots of things and mostly succeeds.

After the screening was the party at Kharma Lounge; I went by to say hello to a few people, but it was very crowded, and after about twenty minutes, I needed to leave. I did get to spend more time with the filmmakers this morning for the panel on the making of the film. It's a really unique production, the second feature by UT's Burnt Orange Productions. They've got a model where they make narrative feature films and get UT students to work as crew members, earning real-world experience. All the cast said that the UT students made up for inexperience with their energy and excitement.

This is the keynote, a conversation between two very popular bloggers. At first, I was interested, but I'm bored now and have been bored for the last 20 minutes. Sorry.

The interview with Henry Rollins was really funny and intense. The first part dealt with his TV show on IFC and how we loves interviewing passionate people and giving them a platform to talk about more than what they are currently plugging.

Henry talked a lot about his experiences with doing USO tours, visiting our troops overseas, and how he explains that there are lots of people like him that hate the war, but that doesn't mean we hate the troops.

He described his acting career as a way to make money, and he loves having the chance to act, even when he knows he isn't a great actor.

On touring with Black Flag, he talked about how they had to tell White Power people at their punk concerts that they completely disagreed with them. Henry miming the bummed out Aryans was great and sardonic.

Henry also went off on politics, claiming the Kerry gave the election to Bush by not effectively standing for something, and that the Dems need to get it together or McCain will cream us in 2008.

I already did a voice post about the very disturbing but strangely funny Q&A for this film, "Danny Roane, First Time Director", the pseudo-autobiographical comedy by comedian Andy Dick. The film itself was funny, but the pace was a bit uneven, with some of the alcoholism scenes dragging on. Of course, I can't really think about this without associating the real life behavior of Dick. He's got a very bizarre character, and it's really hard to tell what's him acting and what is really him. I'm not even sure that Andy knows anymore.

Yesterday's first film was the 6:45 showing of "Darkon", a documentary about a live action role playing campaign in Maryland. The team behind the film was doing a demonstration of their padded sword fighting techniques outside the Convention Center when my group was coming back from lunch, so we all got mini-posters and got to see a News 8 Austin reporter right it out with a guy in armor and a guy on stilts.

The film was fairly well done and quite entertaining. While it's a documentary, it's a doc about a fictional story, this alternate reality that a bunch of Maryland LARPers have created. It's clear that many of the shots were inspired by Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, and there's plenty of majestic battle. Also fun were the personal moments where we follow some of the main role players into their personal lives and see how they interact with their families and kids. The scene where a 7-year old kid dresses as a knight and does a full battle drill for a few minutes was very cute and the audience clapped twice during it.

They had several of the LARPers up on stage with the directors for the Q&A, and in addition to the usual questions about how the film was shot and financed, we also found out about what happened in the Darkon campaign after the tumultous events.

If you like D&D or hitting people with padded sticks, you should really try to get down here for one of the two remaining screenings. It's at Alamo Downtown Monday at 1:30pm and back at the Austin Convention Center on Friday the 17th at 9pm.

The first panel this morning was "Looking for XML in All the Wrong Places", a discussion about where XML works and where it doesn't. It was rather technical, and it took a while for the moderator to match the questions with the expectations of the audience. I got a few ideas for my own XML project about small things I could change to make our format more robust, but my main questions about localization and validation weren't really addressed.

After that, I met up with lizardprincess for "We Got Naked, Now What?", a BlogHer-sponsored panel about the issues with writing personal blogs while being employed. They had taken some surveys and found that about half of the personal bloggers didn't talk about their relationships and sex life online, while more than 3/4ths of them didn't discuss money issues. One panelist, a former adjunct professor at SMU, had a great story about how her anonymous blog about college life brought her a lot of praise, but ultimately resulted in her losing her teaching position. There were a few hostile responses, IMO, but there were still a lot of good voices both on stage and in the audience, and we're certainly moving into a world where employers will have to tolerate their employees merging of their personal and professional lives.

The midnight documentary at the Alamo was great. A filmmaker explores how the MPAA rates films and finds the whole process to be capricious and shrouded in secrecy. To find out more, he hires private investigators to track down the identities of the people on the ratings committee. There's lots of talking head footage of filmmakers talking about their struggles to get a NC-17 rating turned into an R, but it's cut well with the PI footage and there's a strong narrative flow. The Q&A afterward with director Kirby Dick was really insightful, with Aint-It-Cooler Harry Knowles confirming the MPAA's secrecy by talking about his own investigation into the ratings board that was dropped from his book due to legal concerns.

A festival documentary about the communities that haved formed around a couple of gay bars in Mississippi. There's a lot of humor, some sadness, and a really shocking interview with Fred 'God Hates Fags' Phelps. It took too long to end, but the Q&A with the director and crew was hilarious and worth the wait.

Funny with more complex characters than I expected. Interesting use of pause and voiceover, and a great scene with Sam Elliot as the ex-Marlboro Man. It's well worth seeing when it gets wide release later this month.